Limiting Legal Immigration is Hurting U.S. Businesses

The New York Post ran an interesting article recently titled: “Companies Say Trump is Hurting Business by Limiting Legal Immigration”.

According to the article: “The government is denying more work visas, asking applicants to provide additional information and delaying approvals more frequently than just a year earlier. Hospitals, hotels, technology companies and other businesses say they are now struggling to fill jobs with the foreign workers they need.

With foreign hires missing, the employees who remain are being forced to pick up the slack. Seasonal industries like hotels and landscaping are having to turn down customers or provide fewer services. Corporate executives worry about the long-term impact of losing talented engineers and programmers to countries like Canada that are laying out the welcome mat for skilled foreigners.”

Some lawmakers say Mr. Trump is using administrative means to reshape immigration policy because those changes have stalled on Capitol Hill.”

“In practice, businesses say the increased red tape has made it harder to secure employment-based visas.  That has added to the difficulty of finding qualified workers with the unemployment rate falling to 3.9 percent.”

“Experts say a sustained reduction in immigration could dampen growth over time as more baby boomers retire, leaving big gaps in the job market.

That goes for high-skilled immigrants and low-skilled workers, said Francine D. Blau, an economist at Cornell. The latter will be vital in fields like elder care and child care, as well as construction and cleaning.

“A lot of our labor-force growth comes from immigrants and their children,” Ms. Blau said. “Without them, we’d suffer the problems associated with countries with an aging population, like Japan.”

“The H-1B program, which was created to bring in foreigners with skills that business leaders argued would strengthen the economy, has long been a target for some politicians. The visa program has been criticized because corporations have exploited it to replace American workers.

Still, many economists say H-1B holders are valuable. Immigrants file patents at twice the rate of native-born Americans and start about 25 percent of high-tech companies in the United States.

“There’s absolutely no research that supports the idea that cutting legal immigration is good for the economy,” (emphasis added) said Ethan Lewis, a Dartmouth economist.”

Mr. Peri points to what happened when the government deported between 400,000 and 500,000 Mexicans between 1929 and 1934, most of whom worked in agriculture and construction. With fewer people to work the fields, farm owners and agricultural businesses cut administrative, sales and clerical jobs because there was not enough to do.

“Out of eight or 10 positions held by Mexicans, maybe one or two were taken by Americans,” Mr. Peri said. “The rest disappeared.”

“Mr. Trump’s “hire American” push is helping some domestic businesses. One of those is Nexient, which provides software services and competes with firms in India and elsewhere.”

Overall this was a very interesting article.  It should be read to help the reader understand our current economic climate and also to understand how the current stance toward legal immigration may affect our country in the future.

Lawrence Gruner is an immigration attorney located in Sacramento California.  He would be happy to talk to you about your immigration case.   His office handles fiance visas, green card cases, and U.S. Citizenship cases. He may be reached at 916-760-7270, 888-801-6558 or at attorneygruner@gmail.com